mass shootings

But what is "it"? And how do we protect ourselves against whatever it is?

On Friday night, I was at Scotiabank Centre enjoying the Mooseheads-Shawinigan Cataractes Quebec Major Junior Hockey league game. During another commercial lull -- the game was televised nationally during Hockey Day in Canada -- I flipped open my Twitter stream: "#Halifax police say they have foiled mass-shooting plot…"

"Girls have never been attracted to me," said Elliott Rodger before he killed and wounded some of them for it, and men as well, whom he saw as more successful rivals. The events in Isla Vista, California, produced a tidal wave of commentators, a shocking number of whom denied that misogyny had anything to do with his killing spree. Given the abundant documentation to the contrary -- his selfie videos and a 141-page "manifesto" -- this capacity for denial is in some ways even more shocking than the act itself.

New federal gun-control legislation has been declared all but dead on arrival this week. Gridlock in the U.S. Senate, where a supermajority of 60 votes is needed to move most legislation these days, is proving to be an insuperable barrier to any meaningful change in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., massacre. Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association is pushing its controversial agenda to place armed guards in every school, increasing the number of guns in our society and further entrenching gun culture.

Don't

While the final funerals for the victims of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre have been held, gun violence continues apace, most notably with the Christmas Eve murder of two volunteer firefighters in rural Webster, N.Y., at the hands of an ex-convict who was armed, as was the Newtown shooter Adam Lanza, with a Bushmaster .223 caliber AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. James Holmes, the alleged perpetrator of the massacre last July in Aurora, Colo., stands accused of using, among other weapons, a Smith & Wesson AR-15 with a 100-round drum in place of standard magazine clip.